Archives for Exterior Painting Tips

One exterior painting problem that many homeowners encounter is peeling gutters and downspouts. It’s quite annoying… actually. The rest of the paint on your home seems to be weathering normally, but your gutters and downspouts shed paint like a river birch tree sheds its bark on a bad day.

Gutter peeling is typically common to galvanized metal gutters.

The problem exists because the wrong paint was used for the first coat on the gutters and downspouts. The most common mistake I have seen, is applying oil base paint directly to the bare galvanized metal. It will not last longer than a few years.

The test I have run over the last 26 years points to oil base paint being applied to bare metal as the primary culprit. Ninety percent of the time the painters working for the builders made this crucial mistake.

I also found that most oil base primers will not properly bond to galvanized metal. I have found that a primer that is cement based bonds very well to galvanized gutters. Porter Paints carries a product call Porter Guard Galvanized Metal Primer 290. It contains cement and it does a great job of bonding long term.

If you are reading this article and have problems with peeling gutters, there is good news and bad news.

OK, here is the bad news. Be prepared to either strip all your gutters back down to the bare metal and start over, or be prepared to service your gutters on a fairly regular basis. Scraping and priming will not re establish a bond in areas that have not peeled yet. Putting primer and top coat on all your gutters at this point will not reestablish a bond. It cannot penetrate trough the existing paint and cause the defective paint underneath to re-bond to the galvanized metal. You will continue to develop peeling on these metal surfaces over time.

The good news is you can eliminate what is peeling now and prime the bare metal with the primer I mentioned above. It will stop the peeling in those areas.

Here are a few important steps you will need to take.

First you will need to remove any peeling paint from the downspouts and gutters with a wire brush, or scraper. A wire wheel on a drill also works well.

Clean the sanded area with a good grade of solvent to remove any oil on the surface. Wipe down the metal areas with a heavy coat of solvent and allow it to totally evaporate.

After the solvent has evaporated, apply the cement based metal primer paint directly to the bare galvanised metal spots. Allow the primer to dry according to manufacturers recommendations and then apply either latex paint or oil base paint as a top coat.

It’s possible to use latex paint instead of primer.

If all the oils from the bare metal are removed, you can even re coat the metal with latex paint instead of a primer if you so desire. I have found through the years that if the surface has been properly clean, just plain latex paint will bond to bare galvanized metal much better than oil base paint.

Complete the project using a top quality house paint. Use two coats in extreme cases.

When it comes to painting the exterior of a house, many people are not up to the task and do not possess the appropriate skill and experience to accomplish the job in a satisfactory manner. It takes hard work and dedication to finish the project in a timely fashion leaving a good finished product. It may even be a good idea to hire a professional to accomplish this task for you so that you an rest easy that your house is in good, capable hands.

The first thing one should remember when taking on an exterior house painting job is that it is tough work. One’s hand and wrist may begin to cramp and the work itself can be exhausting and seem never-ending. A tiring effort may not be enough in the end to leave a job well-done. In fact, it can be frustrating for the amateur homeowner trying to paint their house all by themselves. Do-overs and redoes can be frustrating and cause a great deal of stress to the homeowner as they try their best and fail. This is why hiring a professional when tackling an exterior house painting project is a good idea.

Not only can the homeowner rest easy knowing that their home is in capable and skilled hands, but they should be happy that they do not have to deal with the complicated task themselves. Exterior house painting can be a huge headache for anybody trying to take on the project themselves. Finding a trustworthy individual to perform the project for you should not be thought of as a copout, but as a wise decision that benefits your home.

I couldn’t believe it about 10 or 15 years ago they came out with another fabulous product that created problems for my home. Elastomeric paint is so good, that it can create problems because it seals what ever you paint with a rubber like coating. I wasn’t the only one to have problems with this product.

I built a two-story room addition onto our home and used this type of paint without any problems at all. I painted the fascia board before I installed it with a oil based alkaloid primer and then painted it with elastomeric paint. By painting the entire piece of wood, before installing it, I had sealed it correctly. This worked out in my favor and this is the only way that I installed new fascia board today.

It wasn’t until I painted the rest of the home with elastomeric paint that I started to have a problem. When I built the room addition, I installed the metal flashing and roofing materials properly, that wasn’t the case on the existing roof of our home, at the single-story level.

I didn’t realize it yet, but while I was painting the fascia board, the roof edge metal wasn’t installed properly in a couple of spots around the bottom of the roof. Which is where most of the water drains off of the roof, because the roof edge metal wasn’t installed properly and the top of the fascia board wasn’t painted at all. The top of the fascia board started to absorb water as it dripped off of the roof.

The elastomeric paint did an excellent job keeping the moisture inside of the wood, where some latex paints would have allowed the moisture to escape through it. Eventually the fascia board rotted away and needed to be replaced.

I never had any problems with the second-story fascia board that was installed and painted correctly. If you’re really looking for an excellent paint for your fascia board, you can use elastomeric paint if you want to. I doubt if I will ever use this type of paint again, because of the problems I had with it in the past.

I know some painting professionals who won’t use anything but elastomeric paint, but this stuff is truly too good of a painting product and I’ve seen other problems with it also. Most of the problems associated with this paint are due to incorrect application of the paint or poor construction methods from other contractors.

Elastomeric paint is truly a wonderful product, but it’s almost too good to use unless the home is built correctly in the paint is applied over the entire surface of the product without leaving any small holes or cracks exposed.